Nearly a third of LA's fires last six years involved homeless people, new report shows

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The 7 on Your Side Investigates Team has reported in the past how the Los Angeles Fire Department's response times don't always meet national standards.

Now a new memo from Interim LAFD Chief Ronnie Villanueva says a surge in calls to help the homeless shows even more just how strapped the department is for resources.

The memo that was supposed to be discussed at Tuesday's LAFD Commission meeting is filled with numbers.

In fiscal year 2024/2025, the city allocated about $961 million to homelessness, while the total LAFD budget for that same fiscal year was well under that - at about $837 million.

The union president for the firefighters calls that shocking.

"We don't want to criminalize homelessness, but we need additional resources strictly for homelessness," said Freddy Escobar, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles. "We need more funding."

The commission board tabled discussing the memo for next month.

That memo details that nearly a third of all fires - 32.91% - the department responded to in the last six years involved a member of the homeless community.

"I don't know what the fix is, but I can tell you the members that I represent cannot sustain the call load of what we are doing for homelessness," Escobar said.

And a higher call load can be blamed, at least partially, on more rubbish fires.

According to the memo, in the last 10 years the number of rubbish fires surged a whopping 475%.

Department data shows nearly half of rubbish fires involve a person experiencing homelessness. The union says all those extra calls drive up response times when resources are already lacking.

In 1960, LAFD had 112 fire stations. Today, it has only 106 despite a surge in population in both the housed and the unhoused.

Tuesday's LAFD Commission meeting comes about a week before L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is expected to release her proposed budget.

"The report shows how much money is being spent to address the homelessness crisis, which will decrease as more Angelenos come inside," Bass' spokesperson Zach Seidl said in response to the LAFD memo.

"We are shattering the status quo to solve homelessness and get people off the streets for good. As we continue to house Angelenos living on the streets, we know that the cost of doing nothing is far greater."